‘Stray Bullet’

By Shiho Fukada

Oct. 7, 2015

Video

This short documentary follows a mother’s devotion after her 11-year-old daughter is struck by a stray bullet in New York City.

Picture an ordinary day on which you step out of your home and wind up in the path of a stray bullet from someone else’s gunfight. This actually happened to Tayloni Mazyck, a vibrant little girl who was shot near her home in Brooklyn two years ago, when she was just 11 years old.

When I heard about this tragedy, I feared that whatever happened to Tayloni and her family next might get lost, their story buried among the ceaseless incidents of gun violence in this country. Stray-bullet shootings do not receive much attention, perhaps because they often involve poor neighborhoods.

So I made this Op-Doc video, which follows Tayloni’s new life one year after the shooting. I was hoping to show the effect of such an appalling random act of violence on a child. In Tayloni’s case, the little girl who used to love running track and dancing has vanished. Though she’s trying her best, she suffers from depression, anger and severe panic attacks.

I am concerned about what comes next for this family. When Tayloni was shot, the family had just moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant after having been priced out of their apartment in rapidly gentrifying Bushwick. Tayloni’s injuries put greater financial and physical burdens on her single parent, Priscilla Samuel, a nurse technician, who was already struggling financially before the incident and is now unemployed. Though most stray-bullet shooting victims have no choice but to keep living in the place where their assault occurred (despite often living near their shooters), Ms. Samuel fought to move her family to what she hoped would be a safer public housing project in Harlem. She has also pushed to put Tayloni in a public school that can handle her new disability, with limited success.

I was deeply touched by the devotion Ms. Samuel has shown her daughter, trying to give her the best chance at a future she can. But she says that even after moving, she doesn’t feel any safer, because of gang violence in their Harlem neighborhood. Their story reminds us that raising our children in a safe environment should not be a privilege.

Shiho Fukada is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, cinematographer and photojournalist based in the United States and Japan. Her previous film, “Japan’s Disposable Workers,” received a World Press Photo Multimedia Award.

Op-Docs is a forum for short, opinionated documentaries, produced with creative latitude by independent filmmakers and artists. Learn more about Op-Docs and how to submit to the series.